2550 Ruisseau Sud, Paroisse de Saint-Ours

I created this painting from a sketch I had made while driving

in a convertible through this parish of Saint-Ours, inspired by

houses with a broken roofline... also called a mansard, because of the architect

François Mansart, born January 23, 1598, in Paris, and died September 23, 1666.

He is wrongly credited, even in his own time, with the ’à la Mansart’ roofs, that is to say

broken rooflines, hence the name Mansards.

However, the wing of the Louvre palace built by Pierre Lescot in 1546

(that is, half a century before the birth of François Mansart) already had a

broken roofline... This is a type of roof in which each slope is made up

of two sections with different pitches.

The lower part, called the BRISIS, has a steeper pitch

while the upper part, the TERRASSON, is much flatter

This structure makes it possible to create livable spaces, called mansards, in the roof, all while concealing the upper part of the roof.